Love March Sparks Civil Rights Revelation

As a practicing agnostic, I’ve often wondered why the Civil Rights Movement began in the church. Christianity has always seemed antithetical to Black liberation to me. After all, this is the white man’s religion, with a white Jesus foisted upon our people during the degradation of slavery. I’ve resented my people’s devotion to a God we wouldn’t even know if not for our conquest. 

This question was cycling through my mind when I stepped off with the members and supporters of Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church for their 54th annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Love March through the streets of East Rock, the state’s longest-running celebration of Dr. King’s life and achievements.

I didn’t feel much like celebrating Martin Luther King’s birthday on Monday. Here we are, in 2024, continuing to march for the same things Dr. King marched for more than 60 years ago. What really broke my heart was seeing the kids marching through the streets of New Haven.

We have to spend time justifying our desire to simply be treated like everyone else. And here are these kids, marching in freezing temperatures on their day off instead of talking trash to each other on Fortnite.

This march has been going on for 54 years. Will these children be marching 54 years hence? Is there a time coming when we can just be people instead of activists and martyrs even at the youngest age?

By the time we made it back to Shiloh for the service following the march, I was feeling down. Things have obviously gotten better since Dr. King was murdered in Memphis, but not so much better that our children are afforded the luxury of sleeping in on the day honoring him.

I stood outside the church for a moment, leaning towards heading home and wallowing in my feelings. That’s when the first notes of gospel drifted out of the closed doors.

Agnostic or not, I love gospel music, so I decided to go inside and enjoy it while warming up. I walked into the church just as the singers began performing Lord You Are Good: 

Lord you are good
You’ve been so good
Lord you are good
You’ve been better than good
I can’t praise enough
I owe you my life
Can’t praise you enough
Even If I tried
Cause you’ve been… so good… to meeeee

I could feel my brain trying to come up with some cynical retort to the lyrics, but it didn’t form. 

My sadness evaporated with each major chord the organ struck. The singers — Divine, Cherish, Naja and Alea — had been singing together for only two years, but their harmonies sounded like they’d spent their lives performing together. The people in the pews were on their feet, swaying with the music and singing along. Melancholy had been replaced with joy. 

I was ready for the Rev. Samuel Ross-Lee when he took the stage after the performance to deliver a sermon. He hit the ground running, in an understated yet powerful style that kept everyone, myself included, hanging onto his every word.

“It doesn’t matter if the people aren’t working for you, just because they look like you,” he said. He spoke the words softly, but they hit like a sledgehammer. Dr. King and his words have been co-opted for all sorts of nefarious ends since his murder, and some of the people who have helped in that dastardly endeavor are the very people he was trying to save.

By the end of the service, I was ready to go back into the cold to march again. I’d been to church.

However it happened, Black Americans have the legacy of Christianity as part of our culture. I think the Civil Rights movement began in the church not just because of the opportunity for organizing there or the moral clarity. It started there because this is hard, depressing work, and it must be balanced with hope. Even if that hope comes from the white man’s Jesus, that might be better than wallowing. 

I didn’t see the kids in church for the sermon, at least. I hope they got to go home and play Fortnite.